When Pierre Méchain discovered this object on October 29, 1780, he described it as a nebula. Charles Messier included it as No. 77 in his catalog on December 17, 1780, and misclassified it a cluster with nebulosity, perhaps because of foreground stars, or possibly mistaking some of its knots for faint stars. M77 is one of the first recognized spiral galaxies, and listed by Lord Rosse as one of 14 "spiral nebulae" discovered to 1850.

This magnificient galaxy is one of the biggest galaxies in Messier's catalog, its bright part measuring about 120,000 light years, but its faint extensions going perhaps out to nearly 170,000 light years. Its appearance is that of a magnificient spiral with broad structured arms, which in the inner region show a quite young stellar population, but more away from the center, are dominated by a smooth yellowish older stellar population.
M77 is about 60 million light years distant, approximately the same distance but another direction as the Virgo Cluster, and is receding from us at about 1100 km/sec.

This galaxy is unique and peculiar because of massive black hole which is placed in her center. It is thought that black hole has mass of about 10 million solar masses. Disk sorrounding active nucleus is home to several prominent star forming regions. These star formation regions are among the brightest known, and perhaps the most luminous within a distance of 100 million light years from us.

M77 can be easily found 0.7 degrees ESE from the 4-th mag star Delta Ceti. Its central 2 arc minutes dominate the view of this almost face-on spiral galaxy in amateur telescopes, and shows remarkable detail with higher magnification in larger instruments. NGC 1055 is situated about 0.5 deg NNW of M77, and visible as a 3' long edge-on spindle, aligned about east to west, of about mag 10.6. 11th-mag NGC 1073 is about 1 deg NNE of M77, a face-on disk of 5' diameter, with a prominent 2x1' bar elongated at about position angle 60 deg.